Semi-Structured Interview Theory
Psychology is an evidenced based science and this has led to many differences of opinion over what constitutes reliable evidence and how that evidence should be interpreted. The types of evidence
Different psychological methods and theories have gained and lost popularity over the last century, for example, the problems of acquiring reliable and comprehensive data from the method of eliciting subjective self reports of cognitions from people in ‘introspectionism’, led to ‘behaviourism’, the objective study of externally observable behaviours, being a favoured method, and then on to ‘cognitive psychology’ which, without returning to introspectionist methods, have included internal cognitive processes in their gamut of research aims, …show more content…
▪ Unknown Knowns will be rarely presented, for example, able bodied participant will rarely comment on how their identity is affected by being so, however, disabled participants will be all too aware of the consequence to their identity. (Phoenix 2007, p51)
The second method to be discussed is the Semi Structured Interview developed by James Marcia in 1966 in order to provide a method of measuring the ideas of crisis in the development of Ego identity in adolescence put forward by Erik Erikson. (Phoenix 2007, p55)
The Semi Structured Interview is designed to gather data on a specific theme whilst allowing flexibility in how the questions are asked, to enable the interviewees own words to be reflected back to them and developed further using counselling techniques to probe and develop responses. This also allows the interviewer to add spontaneous questions or follow tangential lines of inquiry suggested by participants …show more content…
Marcia’s Identity Status Interview is a Semi Structured Interview (Phoenix 2007, p58) and it has enabled the development and study of the four distinct stages in the development of identity which Marcia had identified, namely, Identity Diffusion, Identity Foreclosure, Moratorium and Identity Achievement. This has promoted the view that the healthy development of identity is a process involving all four of these stages as a fundamental task of adolescence and that this process necessarily involves a crisis of identity.
As this method is quite time consuming for both interview and analysis. The samples have to be smaller than those for questionnaire studies for example the Twenty Statements Test discussed above. The quality of interview can also be dependent on interviewers skill and experience so two different interviewers could produce significantly different data with the same
Different psychological methods and theories have gained and lost popularity over the last century, for example, the problems of acquiring reliable and comprehensive data from the method of eliciting subjective self reports of cognitions from people in ‘introspectionism’, led to ‘behaviourism’, the objective study of externally observable behaviours, being a favoured method, and then on to ‘cognitive psychology’ which, without returning to introspectionist methods, have included internal cognitive processes in their gamut of research aims, …show more content…
▪ Unknown Knowns will be rarely presented, for example, able bodied participant will rarely comment on how their identity is affected by being so, however, disabled participants will be all too aware of the consequence to their identity. (Phoenix 2007, p51)
The second method to be discussed is the Semi Structured Interview developed by James Marcia in 1966 in order to provide a method of measuring the ideas of crisis in the development of Ego identity in adolescence put forward by Erik Erikson. (Phoenix 2007, p55)
The Semi Structured Interview is designed to gather data on a specific theme whilst allowing flexibility in how the questions are asked, to enable the interviewees own words to be reflected back to them and developed further using counselling techniques to probe and develop responses. This also allows the interviewer to add spontaneous questions or follow tangential lines of inquiry suggested by participants …show more content…
Marcia’s Identity Status Interview is a Semi Structured Interview (Phoenix 2007, p58) and it has enabled the development and study of the four distinct stages in the development of identity which Marcia had identified, namely, Identity Diffusion, Identity Foreclosure, Moratorium and Identity Achievement. This has promoted the view that the healthy development of identity is a process involving all four of these stages as a fundamental task of adolescence and that this process necessarily involves a crisis of identity.
As this method is quite time consuming for both interview and analysis. The samples have to be smaller than those for questionnaire studies for example the Twenty Statements Test discussed above. The quality of interview can also be dependent on interviewers skill and experience so two different interviewers could produce significantly different data with the same